Page 14 of A Midsummer Night's Ghost

I was genuinely offended.

Ryan rolled his eyes.

“Do you have a problem with me and Jake being together?” I asked, astonished.

Ryan always made jokes about it, but I assumed that was just his sense of humor. He joked about everything, even his own death.

“I have a lot of problems but your dumb relationship isn’t one of them.”

My jaw dropped. “Dumb? What is your problem?

“Just drop it. Go get your little sandwich and I’ll talk to you later.”

“Fine. Bye,” I muttered into my phone and then dropped it by my side.

Turning on my heel, I walked right out of the senior center and stormed across the street to the sub shop. My hands were shaking and I wasn’t even sure why. Ryan had a history of being insensitive. Maybe he was struggling to cope with being stuck a ghost. I could understand that.

But I had always been there for him and taking pot shots at my relationship wasn’t cool.

For some reason my irritation with Ryan caused me to order two sandwiches for Jake, not just one. Roast beef and an Italian club, just in case one sounded better than the other to him.

Take that, Ryan.

I had the satisfaction of watching Jake eat both at midnight, leaning over our burnt orange vinyl countertop in our now burgeoning and dated ranch house.

No ghosts anywhere in sight.

FOUR

“Doyou remember how I got married last week?” Alyssa Dembowski asked me as she put an adorable polka dot satin top on a hanger the day after our move.

I’d forgotten I had that top. I would have to put it back in the outfit rotation now that it had been rediscovered. Moving had its advantages.

But this wasn’t the time to worry about my wardrobe. We were talking about Alyssa’s “wedding.”

I paused and pulled my face out of my closet, where I was filling a shoe organizer in an attempt to unbury myself from boxes. I eyed my best friend.

“I don’t exactly think I could forget that you got drunk at a police function and married a random stranger three hours after you met him. What about it?”

Unlike me, Alyssa was brass, unapologetic, confident, and very analytical when it came to her career and her finances. When it came to her personal life, however, she was impulsive, the life of the party, and probably on some level still the insecure sixteen-year-old who was bullied mercilessly for her weight.

It led to her having a revolving door of boyfriends and dates, and now, apparently, to a husband. They’d run into each otherat the Fraternal Order of Police annual tattoo social event and a mere three hours later drunkenly got married by what I had to assume was an equally drunken judge.

“That’s completely false. I met him with you months and months ago when that old guy died in that lake house you were staging.”

“You met the sheriff for like five minutes. But fine. I’ll give you he wasn’t a totally random stranger.” He also wasn’t exactly a fan of me, so that was a little awkward.

“Thank you.” Alyssa held the blouse up in front of her and paused dramatically. “We’re going on a first date.”

“You and your husband?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s exciting. Where are you going?” Just because the sheriff had seemed annoyed by me finding a dead body in his jurisdiction didn’t mean I wasn’t rooting for Alyssa to have a happily-ever-after.

I stuck my camel-colored sling backs in a shoe slot. Everyday shoes got the organizer. The special ones got their own storage containers put up on a shelf, with a photo of the shoes inside on the outside of the box for easy access. I liked my closet tidy. I couldn’t say this was the closet of my dreams, but Jake had given me custody of the primary bedroom’s closet and he was using the guest room.

“It’s a surprise. He planned the whole thing. Isn’t that romantic?”

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